The Season of the Scumbag
High places, horrible behavior and no end in sight. Welcome to the New Normal Abnormal!
If you’ve read my memoir, A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer’s Row, you might recall that trenchant moment when an Ex asks me, all earnest intent, what the difference was between me and a scumbag?
Ironically I don’t recall what I said in the memoir but in reality what I said without missing a beat is that I owned my scumbaggishness. That is, no one within the sound of my voice or able to read these words, would be at all surprised at the ways that I’ve managed to fall short. In fact I manage to be painfully predictable in both thought and deed in this regard.
Real scumbags though, I went on to say, use inordinate amounts of energy trying to conceal the precise ways in which they are scumbags.
Which has always made me think of the old adage, hung for a sheep as well as a lamb, when thinking of malfeasance. In my past life as a sex columnist I recalled a woman who, fond of having sex with many men simultaneously, made the cloaking claim that while her husband might have expected that she cheats on him, he’d never imagine in his wildest fantasies that it would be with five men at once.
[H]as there ever been a time in human history when more powerful people have been, and are, being busted for that which clearly crosses the bonds and boundaries of standard behaviors?
So it goes that what exists below the surface puts the iceberg tip to shame sometimes. As had happened this past week when reading the court documents connected to the sex trafficking case against Vince McMahon, former WWE head and executive at TKO, the sports fight organization owned by Hollywood heavyweights Endeavor Talent Agency. That one run by Ari Emanuel.
If your eyes start to glaze at the depredations of men in high places you could cut to this little tidbit that will be set off by TRIGGER WARNINGS OF EVERY KIND.
OK. Ready?
During a threesome with the plaintiff, McMahon, in a fit of out-of-the-box thinking, decided to take a poop on one of the participants. Then — because of course, why NOT? — afterward, he continued with aforementioned threesome like nothing poop-related had ever happened.
Yes, I suffered through reading all of that just to give you the most significant nugget of truth posited here as a question: has there ever been a time in human history when more powerful people have been, and are, being busted for that which clearly crosses the bonds and boundaries of standard behaviors?
I mean while we might all be able to imagine private jetting it to Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile island like, say, former President Bill Clinton (or former President Donald Trump) but 50 times, as was the case for Clinton?!?!? FIFTY TIMES!
I haven’t visited my mother 50 times in the last decade and I LOVE my mother.
And now that we mention Trump, a living and breathing monument to that of what we speak, what is it called when a man who has bragged about grabbing stranger’s pussies, goes to court for grabbing a stranger’s pussy, and more: raping said pussy?
It’s called “last week” for Trump who disagrees and calls it a witchhunt. Meanwhile his entire public life has been stained with stories of urine play, porn stars, and sex assaults. Former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, in a settlement agreement, is listed as having sexually harassed at least 13 employees.
And the list goes on and wearyingly on. From the golden oldies Bill Cosby, Louis CK, and Harvey Weinstein to the young turks James Franco, Danny Masterson and each and every person whose penis found its way to Pedophile Island.
Let’s not stop there.
The preponderance of stories where married school teachers are risking the proverbial “it all” on dalliances with their younger charges. Usually, in an eyebrow raising turn, a female teacher with a teenage or prepubescent boy. These are sex abuse cases, but in actual fact seem to be more about power. As do they all really.
Because after a little poking and prodding, ahem, it turns out that, according to a study, that 18 percent of heterosexuals and 17 percent of homosexuals had tried coprophilia.
McMahon was, summarily, fired. Though with his right hand man still in charge who knows how serious of a slap this was. Weinstein jailed, Trump fined ($83 mil at last check), Masterson jailed, Cosby jailed and then released, Franco keeping his head down, as are everyone on the Epstein flight manifest.
And yet the threesome poop story still haunts. All reading this have pooped. Some reading this have had threesomes. But to do both at the same time, while I am not a prude, seems to me to be a disconnect of the most fundamental kind.
Seems. Because after a little poking and prodding, ahem, it turns out that, according to a study, that 18 percent of heterosexuals and 17 percent of homosexuals had tried coprophilia. That is, the eating of poop in a sexual setting.
Yes the study was from 1999 and involved men from Finland but maybe, perhaps, this is a new-ish trend, one that clearly marks a certain fin-de-siècle sense of surrendering to failure. Or maybe it’s just a case of heavy hangs the head that wears the crown…of poop? Who knows?
What I DO know is that, a la Bukowski, “I have seen dogs with more style than men,” he once wrote. “Although not many dogs have style.”
And I have not seen a single dog poop on their partner who they are sex trafficking out only to continue having sex amidst the slick of recent shit. That I have not seen. And thanks to my algorithm now I have, and so has the rest of the world. Now…with the betting windows open as I write: how long before McMahon has been “forgiven” and allowed to go back to his poopy ways?
Answers on a postcard please.
And for those of you who followed the OXBOW puzzle box travail the long wait is over. Though Transavia Airlines has lost two of the custom 10 boxes we had made (and all of the t-shirts), as well as the last in existence copies of The Thin Black Book, we have recovered eight of the custom made boxes. So inside this handmade box you will find LOVE’S HOLIDAY, colored vinyl, a memoir, and a 250-piece OXBOW puzzle.
This is a true limited edition given how much logistical misery this has caused us. Which is to say only EIGHT will be made/sold.
What guarantees you get yours? Venmo me $220: @Eugene-Robinson-28 … this is the last and only time this will be mentioned/offered. Good luck!